My Highest Pleasure: William Hunter's Art Collection

William Hunter (1718–83) was an outstanding figure of his time, not only as a surgeon and doctor who successfully delivered six royal children to George III and Queen Charlotte, but also as Professor of Anatomy at the Royal Academy of Arts. His involvement in the arts, as a result of which he became intimate with Hogarth, Ramsay, Stubbs and Reynolds, stemmed from his pursuit of medical illustrations. He founded the first public museum in Scotland, the present Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, and bequeathed to it his remarkable collection of paintings, prints, drawings, coins, classical vases, medals, books and curiosities.

Celebrating the 250th anniversary of the opening of the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow in 2007, this book provides a full study both of this many-faceted surgeon/connoisseur and of his collection of art, which not only contains a number of outstanding masterpieces, such as a Rembrandt, but also provides a revealing snapshot of the taste of the period. While illuminating this crucial transitional period in British art, the book is at the same time a catalogue of the Hunterian collection.

Contributors: Peter Black, curator at the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow; Mungo Campbell, Deputy Director; Anne Dulau, curator; Helen McCormack, has a Paul Mellon grant to research William Hunter.

Published to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the opening of the Huntarian Museum.